Lovett or Leave It - Alexa, give us gay rights

Episode Date: June 30, 2018

Kennedy gets out. Ocasio-Cortez gets votes. Nazis get retweets. And we all get sick of bad surprises. Guy Branum, Taz Ahmed, and Adam Lustick join Jon to discuss the week’s news, Marco Rubio’s twitter, Pepsi cinema, and the hearty genes of Ashkenazi jurists.

What is up, Los Angeles? It is great to be back at the improv. You're in the front row. Turn toward the stage. Every week. Are you coming to the late show too? Oh my God. It's good to see you. I don't know why she's captivated me

in a way that you haven't. I don't know what that is. It's like, why is Adam Driver's face captivating? I don't know. But you want to watch him when he's on screen. What is that? What makes him good? He is very good. What's the deal with that? Like, oh yes, Adam Driver's just staring, but you're like, that's interesting. You have that quality. You could, you could. Some training. You know?

Oh, it's going to be loose tonight. This week was terrible. Oh, my God. It just keeps coming. If you would have said that last week, when what we were debating was toddlers in court alone because they've been separated from their parents and we said that is going to be only part of what makes next week bad i would have said oh no kennedy's retiring

it's so bad it's so grim it's so bad. It's so grim. It's so grim. Oh, we love you. Oh, you love me. That's good. And you guys get your IUDs while you can? How long do they last on the shelf? Are they shelf stable? Is it like ranch?

I don't know anything about them. Five years. Five years? All right, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. You can do a lot of fucking in five years. What last ten years? The copper one?

I don't trust anything that lasts ten years. Ten years from when? I don't want to know. I never need to know about any of that. It's one of the perks of being gay. There's no diamonds ever. Never have to think about them ever. And I don't know what the copper thing is. What I'm picturing is so wrong. I'm picturing the ring from Lord of the Rings. All right, you guys want to start the show?

All right, you guys want to start the show? So, Hysteria, a new podcast from Aaron Ryan, co-hosted by Alyssa Mastromonaco, Blair Imani, Grace Parra, Kieran Deal, Megan Gailey, and Ziwe Fumido, many of whom you've heard on Love It or Leave It. It is a fantastic group of women hosting a show for Crooked Media. It's awesome. The first episode dropped today.

You should subscribe. Or dropped. What is this? What am I, Drake? The first episode dropped today. You should subscribe. Or dropped. What is this? What am I, Drake? The first episode is out now. You should subscribe. It's great. What's your name again?

Betsy. Betsy in the front row, always at the improv, who has a beat on me like... You're like one of those paintings. It doesn't make sense, but you look at me like you're looking through a painting in a wall and you're a creepy motel owner. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

You watch this show like we can't see you. What does that mean? I don't know, but it makes sense from up here. All right, I'm going to bring up our panel. Very excited for this show. She's an activist, storyteller, and co-host of the podcast Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

Please welcome back Taz Ahmed. Hi, how are you? Thanks for being here. Oh, it was a... I've got to figure out a way to offer a handshake in a way that's not awkward. Please sit.

How are you? Terrible. Terrible. Good, good, good, good. Good, good, good. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. You know him from Comedy Central's Corporate, and he's the host of the No Joke podcast.

Please welcome Adam Lustig. Hi, Adam. Hi. How are you? Hi, Betsy. How you doing? Hi, Adam. Hi, how are you?

Hi, Betsy. How you doing? You are looking through us. You were right. Isn't that weird? Betsy, you're cool. Good gear, though. Good gear. I see that hat every week.

It says, fuck Trump. She wears it every week. It's her love it or leave it hat. Amen. She lives nearby. Amen. She saw me walking down La Cienega before I moved. It gets creepier

by the fucking moment. And finally, he is the host of Talk Show The Game Show. He's one of the funniest comedians. He's one of the smartest comedians. He's an all-star of Love It or Leave It.

He is the author of a new book that you can pre-order right now. I have it in my hand. It's My Life as a Goddess. Please welcome Guy Branham. I had the privilege of reading the book in advance.

Guy. John gave me a quote. It's very nice. My quote is on the back. Look at that. But you should pre-order this book right now. I love this book. Thank you so much. Remember, fans of Love It or Leave It, your hero, John Lovett, wants you to buy my book.

Please buy my book. Please do it. Buy Guy's fucking book. In a post-Justice Kennedy world, it is only personal wealth that can protect us. Let's get into it. Yeah. What an absolutely soul-crushing week.

So bad. So it wasn't just Kennedy's retirement that hurt this week. It was the gutting down of journalists in Annapolis and the gutting of unions and the upholding of the Muslim ban, the horrible gerrymandering rulings, and that Trump has no plan to reunite families at the border. You know, one thing that I was just thinking about is that part of the reason I think these past few weeks have felt so painful is that we didn't do anything new and worse, but things got worse. Like, the mistake we made in the past just became more evident for the consequences of it. You know, we all knew when Trump won how bad it was. We could feel it.

But I think it's amazing how often we can still be caught by surprise by just how terrible a failure that was, just how much of a horrible fucking joke it is. The mistake doesn't get worse, but we see the consequences sort of taking chunks of us bit by bit by bit. And I think the Kennedy retirement, you know, Donald Trump getting to appoint two Supreme Court justices in his first term was a very predictable outcome of his winning. And the Gorsuch piece was so hard because obviously it was brutally unfair, but also because it went from being a horrible hypothetical to an irreversible reality the night Trump won.

And we never had this moment of realizing how true it was. It was just one more horrible thing about what happened. But now, with yet another justice, we see that there will be a 40-year tail to what Trump has done. So look, we can get into the politics of it, but I just wanted to start by just talking about how we're doing, because I think a lot of people are feeling really down right now. So what was your reaction to this, Taz? Well, I am Muslim and following the Muslim ban has been something we've been doing closely with my day job at 18 Million Rising. We're waking up every day at 7 a.m. to see if the Supreme Court had announced their ruling and they kept moving it because it was one of the last

things that they had ruled on. I knew what was coming. We knew that this was going to be the outcome, but it was still devastating. Him saying that he was going to retire was the other cherry on top to go on this. It was a bad week. I can't even remember everything. You just listed everything. I was just like, oh my gosh, I forgot that happened this week because it was just so many things happened. Guy, in the ruling related to the upholding of the Muslim ban, they basically found that because they had modified it, right, they reverse engineer it to have a justification for claiming it wasn't focused on Muslims. It involved other countries. It could be legitimately defended on a national security basis. However, that required disregarding the many, many utterances of the president about it.

What did you make of that? What's crazy is when I went to law school 15, 20 years ago, it was always like, well, it's so hard to say that laws are intentionally racist. I mean, unless someone actively says it. And the terrible thing is that there are always these temptations to believe in normalcy. On the one hand, I knew intellectually that Trump controls two branches of government, and the Supreme Court was just Anthony Kennedy. It was just one 81-year-old Catholic from Sacramento between us and chaos, and he is gone now. But the thing is that they were trying to batter that thing through

and without anyone in any other part of the government standing up and saying no, it was going to happen eventually. But you have to accept that this also means precedent. That this means that a legislator who directly says, oh, I'm voting for this law because it's going to screw over black people or I'm voting for this law so that it will hurt gay people.

That's fine now. You cannot use that to say that it is a law that was intended to hurt gay people or black people or whoever, because apparently logic doesn't work anymore. Right. Well, it's also not what they did when it came to things like the Baker case or other cases. I mean, traditionally, to try to understand why a law was passed, you look at what people said to understand their motivations, to understand if there was a kind of discriminatory intent.

So that's dispiriting. Adam. Yes, John. Did you know that you could just call Air Force One and talk to the president? Stuttering John is way just on the ball, yes. Stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show somehow got all the way through to Air Force One somehow, not even just the White House, but the airplane,

which is, I guess, good for you, Howard Stern and company? I don't know. Maybe we should try it. If you would have said that a Howard Stern offshoot was going to prank call the president, who is Donald Trump, and inside of that prank call

make a case for the reunification of immigrant families. I would have thought it would be Artie Lange. I would have put my money on Artie Lange. That feels like more of an Artie Lange prank. Yeah, one of the silly details, not silly, I should never say that, but one of the I'm going to put my money on Artie Lang. That feels like more of an Artie Lang prank. Yeah. One of the silly details, not silly, I should never say that,

but one of the details that sort of made me sort of scrunch my eyebrows was that because Justice Kennedy was the swing vote, all of the other justices would, like, flatter him, or there was a report in the Times that they would, like, be nice to him, and, like, during in-sessions, like, in rulings, he'd be like, fabulous point by the handsome Justice Kennedy. Anyway, I just wanted to say, and this, like, constant pand-sessions, like, in rulings, he'd be like, fabulous point by the handsome Justice Kennedy. Anyway, I just wanted to say. And this, like, constant pandering to him.

And I was like, wow. Like, the Supreme Court is just another shitty workplace with workplace politics. We have to be, like, nice to the guy that brings the donuts on Friday because you want the good one. And, like, that still applies at the Supreme Court level. It was a little dispiriting to me that they're just flawed humans. Back when Sandra J. O'Connor was still around, you could play them against each other. I think you're the prettier moderate. What are we going to do?

So one of the things that's happened in the wake of this sort of terrible news is you've seen a lot of kind of looking backwards to what happened in 2016. I think you've seen a fair number of Hillary warned us kind of arguments. And then you've seen this sort of internecine fighting of like, aren't you, are you

happy now Jill Stein voters? Are you happy now Bernie Sanders voters or whatever the libertarian guy's name is who's been forgotten to history even though he caused all this. Taz, do you feel any of that? Do you find yourself going back to 2016 at all even though it's kind of productive? I'm hearing it in Alexandra's win.

I feel like people are saying that she won, which is so exciting. I'm so excited that a 28-year-old woman of color won in New York. She beat out Crowley, who was supposed to take over Nancy Pelosi's seat. I think that was very exciting. But, you know, she won,

and everyone's like, oh, she won because she's a Bernie person. I, oh, she won because she's a Bernie person. I'm like, she won because she's a woman of color in New York City and people want to see a change in the system. She's not winning because of Bernie Sanders. At least that's my opinion. I think that both she represented change because of who she was, but also what she called for.

Did you see that Sean Hannity tried to insult her? No. Did anybody see this? So Sean Hannity was like, can you believe this crazy democratic socialist? And he put her platform up on the screen and it's like all really good. It's like,

this woman wants everyone to have healthcare and thinks we should tackle climate change and remove corporate power. And it does feel as though the people that write chyron's for Fox News often seem as though they're crying out for help because you know they're 23 year olds like in New York City being like I didn't know this was my life and I don't know how to get out of it because I

write chyron's for a monster so here. So this is how I express myself. Guy, what did you make of the Ocasio-Cortez win? It's very exciting. I mean, what she says is great. What she represents in her identity is great. But also, how she talks is great. Having somebody who is a politician, like so many of the Gen X and millennial politicians we have are people who really wanted to be politicians when they were four

and are doing their best Mitch McConnell impression. And having somebody with a goddamn photo of her a year ago tending bar and realizing that this is somebody who's probably going to go to Washington, D.C. and be making policy, it's really, really exciting. But I'm also really excited that the parts of the Democratic Party who have felt alienated showed up to a primary and declared themselves and didn't just decide to get whiny come the general. Yeah, that is exciting. So let's talk about what happens moving forward.

We have the fight over the Supreme Court, but we also have now a fight over making sure families are reunified, over making sure that this Muslim ban, we still fight against it. I know that this has been a discouraging time, but the fight to make sure that as a country, we're not discriminating against Muslim people just because they're from countries with Muslim populations goes on. Where do you see that fight going, Tess? Oh my gosh, I'm so depressed this week. I don't know where it's going. I don't know if i can be a beacon of hope but you don't have to be a beacon of hope we you know false hope is useless i feel like let's kill to me there's a little bit that telling people to be hopeful is like telling women to smile like yeah you know uh like true are we doing because it's true or no yeah yeah no it's true you know i want to be hopeful but i also want to make sure that the hope is earned.

It's a little bit like Monty Python. It's like, it's just a flesh wound. It's just a flesh wound. It's just a scratch. No, like, we're fucked up. All right? All right, we got pieces of us lying around. Like, we're in trouble. Yes.

I actually think there's something valuable in Kennedy leaving the court. Hear me out. valuable in Kennedy leaving the court. Hear me out. I feel like for a long time, for socially liberal people, it has been easy to treat the judicial branch as essentially Alexa for policy. Alexa, order us gay rights.

And without having to pass a law or fight these fights, good things happen. And a lot of shit was also happening at the same time. Like, you know, making it so much harder for public colleges to have affirmative action. Like, there was a bunch of shit that was falling apart. But it felt like we were on this, like, sixth grade civics class inexorable march towards greater liberty. And I think this reminds us all, no, we must show up in November or else it all falls apart. Absolutely.

And to your point, I think that Kennedy's liberalism on gay rights concealed the fact that there were a lot of decisions concentrating economic power, concentrating corporate power that continued this week. Here's what really pisses me off oh that bastard loved that he wrote every major gay rights decision every major gay rights decision only happened because he voted for it and he wrote beautiful language that made me fucking cry at my telemarketing job in 2003 when he made like sodomy laws unconstitutional. It's beautiful. I thought that fucker would be like John Paul Stevens and see himself as a moderate to liberal and stay on that court to protect things,

and he didn't. Fuck him. Taz, you sort of evaded accountability there because we moved past you because you weren't hopeful. But I do want to, before we move on, as somebody who cares about this issue, has been talking about this issue for a long time, what is next?

I know that this is a hard time. I know we're not sure exactly what we're going to do, but what do you see as what activists will do to continue to fight against the Muslim ban? The machine that we're in right now is a 30-year machine. I read somewhere that all the pieces that are in place were put in place a very long time ago

before I started, you know, becoming a professional activist and organizer. I think right now activists are kind of just responding. And I think when Obama was in office for those eight years, we were just kind of like getting by and we were like, oh, we won. We need an overhaul. We need like a systematic what's

our 40-year plan so that we can change the long term and I don't know if we're doing that I don't know who's doing that you know people of color progressives are trying to do this but it's also really tough because we're battling this huge system that wants to kill us and that's hard one other piece of this fight is going to be fighting for Roe and making sure that we make the case that what's the election in November is about preventing the criminalization of abortion. But on all these fights, I think that's another reason to look at what happened in the New York, in the Ocasio-Cortez race as a sign of hope, not because everyone needs to read into one race their prior expectations of what politics should be. But what you see is people attaching themselves

to a candidate who has a larger vision that may not be practical right now, but that says, here are the things we believe in and want, and we're not going to negotiate ourselves. And she's 28, which means she has a lot of years ahead of her of doing this work. She's 28. She's going to be the same age

as the Supreme Court Justice Trump appoints. Not funny? I don't care. I think it was. Oh, get used to it. Get used to it. There could be one more. He could get another.

Ginsburg has had cancer so many times. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She's tough as shit. She's, look. Send her vitamins. I come from hearty, tiny Ashkenazi stock. Amen.

Amen. And we of the tiny Ashkenazi, we live for fucking ever. When I was born, there is a tomb in Brooklyn, and it says on it, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother. Because I had a great-great-grandmother when I was born. She was born in a country that didn't exist when she died.

That's how long... You know how long you have to live to say that you were born in, like, Prussia? My other great-grandmother, Fanny, she was born... She was deaf. I don't think that makes you live less time. But she overcame a lot

being a deaf woman in an America that didn't have the protections for people with disabilities. And she lived to be over a century. My other great-grandmother, In an America that didn't have the protections for people with disabilities. And she lived to be over a century. My other great grandmother, Shirley. She could fit in a backpack. She was a tiny woman.

Sweet as can be. Late 90s. Great grandma Ruthie. Also, tiny as could be, made completely tasteless cookies. That's what kept her alive. Of a very, very serious and often quite mean-spirited woman. She threw a television out the window

because it was black and white. And she thought that a family that loved her would have gotten her color. Fair. Fair. Lived another 50 years after that. Spite can keep you alive. She lived 50 years after people moved on from black and white TVs.

Have hope, Ruth. Have hope for Ruth. Please, Ruth. We tiny Ashkenazi will bury you all. When we come back, OK Stop! Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back! Now for a game we call OK Stop. And we're back! Now for a game we call OK Stop. Here's how it works. We'll roll a clip and then the panel can say OK Stop to talk about it. Remember back a few years when Indiana Jones fought all those Nazis and we all agreed that that was OK because Nazis are evil and hurting Nazis was fine? Well, Steve King, a member of Congress, retweeted a Nazi this week

and he isn't so sure he should be ashamed of himself. Alright, so Congressman, help me understand this thing with the tweet, the guy that you retweeted. I'll put it up there on the screen for people. You have said, look, I don't agree with Collette, I'm not a neo-Nazi, I don't embrace what he's about.

That's all true, right? Well, it's generally true, I don't know that that's exactly true. Okay, stop. What? Reminds me of Ghostbusters in this sense. When someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes. Someone asks you if you agree with Nazis, it's such an easy no. It's an easy one.

It's an easy one. That's an easy. That's a gimme. That's two inches from the golf's an easy one. That's an easy one. That's an easy one. That's a gimme. That's two inches from the golf cup. Put it right in? Quote, but what I'm trying to say is that here's a story that says that 65% of the Italians under 35 have had enough with immigration.

And I said, when will America wake up on this? When we see it the same way. But the guy has espoused ugly neo-Nzi type principles and you do not agree with those is that true sir well obviously not okay stop um that we're still playing the game of obviously in 2018 when children are in cages no the whole like can you believe it they implied i might be racist that republicans have been playing for the past 15 years. Okay, stop. We have to be able to push past people's official story

and look at the substance of what they're doing. It just makes me so mad that like... Thank you. All these dudes who had to go to Italy for the last time, and they were really mad at immigrants and or Jews being in their country. While they were still around, we were able to say, that's like being a Nazi, and America got creeped out. But then everybody's grandpa died,

and Europe voted for a bunch of Nazis in the European elections, and now we've forgotten what it means because no one paid attention in history. Yes, and also it's like, no, I'm obviously not a Nazi. Just the Venn diagrams of our views have a lot of parts where it makes purple. You know? Just a lot of purple. I guess we do have to thank Twitter. Ultimately, it is a hellscape out there obviously but at least it's like

a bigot unmasking service. It's sort of served as like yeah just sort of like people can really if someone's sort of that platitude of like

if someone tells you who they are kind of believe them. Twitter is really sort of this kind of Nazi confession

website. But there are but there are so many people who when called on it will then say I was just an ironic Nazi. Like Milo Yiannopoulos, who's like, I was just playing a fun game when I encouraged people to murder the press. Yes. Yeah, sometimes I agree with you that, like, yeah, Twitter and social media has basically kind of used horrible dopamine response to get people to put chunks of their

brain out of their brain more than we used to and there's value to that but also sometimes I think you know there's a bunch of mud and shit at the bottom of the river and like it's good to know that it's there but it's still bad when we shake it all up and make the water all turgid you know turbid, you know? Turbid? Yeah, but you're... What are you, strunk and white? What's going on? And it makes the water all turbid? You know? Great word, great word.

What does turgid mean? I'll show you later. It means hard or firm. I'm sorry. That was very shouty of me. But I love a dick joke, you know? Make dick jokes while you can, you know? While the sun shines. That's what you all say.

I have no idea who he is. I don't know why we're giving him a world-famous name now into the news. I'm not obligated to do a full background check on anybody. I didn't treat a message from him. I treated a, I tweeted a Breitbart story. I recognize... Okay, stop. Stop, stop, stop. So first of all, it's amazing how much this echoes what Trump did when he was asked about David Duke. He's like, David Duke never heard of him.

Yeah, Trump retweeted Islamophobic tweets from someone in Europe. He retweeted three of them. It took him about three or four, maybe like three weeks to finally unretweet. It's just he set the precedence. Now this is kind of like what's happening. You're not. It's okay. This is okay.

Which is so bad. Well, it's also that it's funny. Like he's sort of giving up the game. He's like, I wasn't trying to retweet a neo-nazi i was trying to retweet the website that uh launders nazi and white supremacist propaganda into something on the borderline between nazism and conservatism so that then conservatives on the borderline between radical conservatives and serious conservatives can share it so then serious conservatives on the borderline between congress and the national review can share it so that I can share it and it's like oh so your mistake was just cutting out the middleman.

I got his Breitbart and I tweeted it and I went back a little bit later when some folks pointed this out and I went and got the tiny URL and I tweeted the Breitbart story off of their website. I said this is... Okay stop we live in hell. Not supposed to say tiny URL. I've never heard the words tiny URL spoken. You don't say that. You don't say tiny URL.

Do you? And also, dude, it's 2018. Twitter auto-shortens the links. What I intended to send. I'm not deleting that because then you all pile on me and say King had to apologize. He was wrong. He knows he's guilty. I'm not deleting that, because then you all pile on me and say King had to apologize, he was wrong, he knows he's guilty.

I'm not. I'm not going to delete it. That would mean admitting I was wrong, which is the worst thing a person can do. I think we all have to learn how to accept being wrong. I think that a big part of growing up... And also, all of your worst opinions from high school or junior high

are on a blog from 2004. Like, it is just waiting for there to be enough scrutiny come to look for you. And I think being able to say, like, I grew up and I learned things, I'm sorry, because let's accept the world in the past was more horrible

in many ways, and a lot of us were there for it. So sorry because let's accept the world in the past was more horrible in many ways and a lot of us were there for it. So if we want to make the world better, we have to say I was part of this world and I'm committed to being part of a better world. Absolutely. Guilty one bit. I'm human. Right, right. But I don't get it. It's human to err, right? Yes. But that's why I corrected it. Right. But you saw me correct it. You said don't get it. It's human to err, right? Yes. That's why I corrected it. You saw me correct it. You said don't give the guy a platform, but you won't take down the retweets,

so you're giving him a platform. I don't have him up on CNN. Bringing him up is the most important story. I would just... It's also just... We're dancing on this tiny part of the issue, which is that Steve King is a proponent of white purity and white nationalist politics

all the fucking time. And the fact that he retweeted a neo-Nazi is because he agrees with neo-Nazis and the propaganda they're spreading in Europe. The fact that he got caught

and won't delete it is actually, you know, we got bigger fish to fry. The URL was too tiny. I couldn't find it to delete it. If it was a regular-sized URL, it would have been gone. And that's okay.

Stop. When we come back, we're going to play a game about democratic slogans. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Now for a game we call three-word chant. Democrats. You can't win with them, you can't win without them.

Needless to say, Democrats haven't proven ourselves to be the best at winning elections lately, and part of the reason is our policy positions often have nuance, which is very out of fashion. But Republicans are good at summarizing what they want in a three-word chant. They've got hits like drain the swamp or build the wall, and who can forget that underground Republican hit, Nazis are good. But there's value to these slogans. Not that we need to have policies that fit slogans,

but it's valuable to figure out how to digest what you care about in a way that's simple and elegant. Maybe it's time we close the laptop on our thousand word thing pieces and our white papers and just start shouting appointees after the midterms, which is a work in progress. That's why you didn't apply. So that's why we want to brainstorm on some three word chants in a game we're calling three word chant. to brainstorm on some three-word chants in a game we're calling Three-Word Chant. So I'm going to read some complicated research on a democratic policy position, and our panelists will come up with a three-word chant on the issue. The audience will chant it with you, and after everyone's gone, the audience will decide who won. Oh, not leaving the stage. After everyone's had a turn, the audience will decide who won by chanting their favorite. Okay, you guys ready?

Yes. All right. Healthcare. We spend more on healthcare than any other country. The average cost of a hospital stay in the U.S. is almost three times the average for other developed countries. Our life expectancy is the lowest among all advanced economies. We're the only wealthy country without universal coverage. Many in the left call for single payer or Medicare for all.

Single payer is where the entire population is in the same health risk pool. Costs are lower because the risks are distributed. Interest groups like insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals are going to resist any system that adversely affects them. The ACA was able to pass in part because it co-opted these interest groups. Of course, this meant a more complex law and more opportunities for the GOP to undermine it. So the left is in the position of both wanting to protect the valuable gains of the ACA,

such as protections for those with pre-existing conditions, and also demanding we replace it with something better. Let's figure out a chant. Yeah. Something simple. This is a little too vague. Before was better. It's just something simple. Just sort of framing it in sort of a historical.

That sounds like Make America Great Again. Yeah, maybe that's a little too looking backwards. Some options. I don't like it. More like France. Yeah. Same risk pool. Gold for cults.

Stop killing us. Gimme dat lung. Gimme dat lung. Gimme dat lung. I mean, it applies more to people who need lung transplants specifically. But you can swap in your procedure. Learn feels like a placeholder there, yeah. How about it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and disease?

Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's really good. Let us live is an option. Let us live. Bodies are good. Bodies are good. No, that's fine. Hey, babe, you know I care.

Give me that single pair. Yeah! Is there anything that's as good or as it's going to be just Medicare for all? Is that just what we have to start chanting? Medicare for all. It doesn't have a good mouth feel. Is that just what we have to start chanting? Medicare, see the word, Medicare for all.

Doesn't have a good mouth feel. Well also I think just taking the idea of like Medicare, something we already know exists, we're just like, eh, that feels like a governmenty thing. Like why don't we take a little clue from Silicon Valley and just call it like Deborah. Like, you know. Swaz. Yeah, like hey Sw Like, you know. Swaz. Yeah.

Like, hey, Swaz, I need a dental checkup. And yes, it involves a lot of forms online, but it feels cooler, you know? Yeah, totally. Deborah. What do you guys got? Care for all. Care for all.

I think the chant that's being used now is healthcare for all. Just healthcare for all. No more insurance. Fuck the insurance companies. Deborah. Fuck the insurance, Deborah. We're better than Canada Step the fuck back

I am not Canadian But those people have been trying to figure out how to listen to each other And take care of each other for a really long time Also, they only got national healthcare As a compromise as part of picking a flag that wouldn't piss anybody off. I will talk later about the 1964 Canadian flag debate after the show.

Yeah, they landed on a leaf. The most important symbol of our country are the trees that were here before we were here. You should have seen the first flag. You should have seen the first flag. I don't know what it was. It's the Canadian Red Ents and it's very ugly. It implied that the nation of Canada was a British boat. It would have been hilarious if you were Canadian.

This shit crushes in Montreal. They're like, healthcare for all. I don't think we can beat it. Well, that's pretty good. That's three word chant. It's harder than we expected. And we'll return to this game in the future because a better deal was not very good.

What'd you say? Make it free. Fix them up. Healthcare. Let us live. Let us live. I'm still in love with Care for All. I mean, that's like a worldview.

Care for All, yeah. All right. Do we think that works? Care for All? Chant it. Chant it. Care for All. Care for All. Care for All. That's pretty good. That's pretty cool. Yeah. chant it chant it care for all care for all

care for all that's pretty good yeah that's pretty cool yeah because it also doubles as like careful all it almost is like

yeah yeah and it's better than public option which will allow the private system to remain intact while making sure

everyone has access to a medic-like option. I like that. I like that. It seems like blank for all for all of them is the answer. So glad we solved that. When we come back, a lightning round game about tariffs. Hey, don't go anywhere.

There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back! Tariffs are back, baby. And these aren't your grandpa's tariffs that worsened the Great Depression or your dad's tariffs that resulted in hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the early 2000s. These are different. Trump is going to great lengths in his trade war to not try to upset voters,

so we thought we'd highlight some of the inconsistencies in a game we're calling, Isn't It Terrific? Would anybody out there like to play the game? What's your name? I'm Lydia. Lydia. How you doing? Trump adjusted terms, I'm doing okay.

Great. That's the best we've got. Have you been following the trade wars? Yes. Do you believe that the blockade is going to help the emperor? Lydia, I'm going to say a product, and you have to tell me if it has a tariff on it or not. If it has a tariff, you say not if it has a tariff you say terrific yes you seem mad about that i can deal with it

oh they like puns uh if it doesn't have a tariff you say not terrific okay pretty simple we've simplified the word choice because we've had some problems in the past. Are you ready? I'm ready. Lydia, here we go. Telescopes. No. Not terrific. No. Terrific. Telescopic sights on rifles. Terrific.

No. They put them on the telescopes, but not telescopes for guns. They were supposed to be terrorists for all kinds of weapons and weapons accessories, but they were recently removed from the list, so we won't see higher prices on flamethrowers, grenade launchers, landmines, missiles, shotguns, you name it.

Thank God, because my monthly budget is so narrow as it is. Yeah, with gas prices and the tariffs on flamethrowers... I have to flamethrow on a budget, you guys. I'm just a working mom trying to flamethrow and put food on the table. Machine tools used to make computers.

Terrific. Yes. Laptop computers. Terrific. No, not terrific. Household dishwashers. Terrific. No.

But commercial dishwashers. Terrific. No, not terrific. Household dishwashers. Terrific. No, but commercial dishwashers. Terrific? Yes, because they're putting them on the commercial ones, but not the ones that'll hit consumers. Molten salt-cooled acrylic acid reactors. Not terrific. Of course terrific. Why would that be here?

Lydia, get your head in the game. What is going on? Vertical turret lates. What? Incorrect, yes. What about things that could really put pressure on China, like clothing, games, shoes, and toys? Not terrific.

Not terrific, because that would mean the American people would see the damage that's being done instead of 12 months from now, you know, et toys. Not terrific. Not terrific, because that would mean the American people would see the damage that's being done instead of 12 months from now, you know, etc. Final question. Biscuit ovens, chainsaws, cigarette-making machines, golf cart, jukeboxes, vending machines, spaghetti-making machinery, and strobe lights.

Terrific? Trick question. They were all going to be put under tariffs, but Trump took them off the list recently, and we have no idea why. And I bet it's because he doesn't know either. Lydia, you've won. Isn't it terrific?

I guess. No, no, no. Stop chanting for Lydia. Some of her answers were crazy. When we come back, the, no. Stop chanting for Lydia. Some of her answers were crazy. When we come back, the rant wheel. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back.

This week on the rant wheel, we have Common Ground, the new Sean Spicer program, fireworks, prank calls, hypocrisy, Marco Rubio's Twitter, MLK quotes being misused, Uncle Drew, and Priyanka and Nick. Let's spin the wheel. Let's spin the wheel. It has landed on fireworks, and I want to just start by saying that fireworks terrify dogs, and it leads a lot of dogs to freak the fuck out and run away, and that sucks. But in and of itself, not reason to dismiss fireworks altogether.

Here's the thing about fireworks. I feel like there's a fireworks curve we go through in life where they start out at completely fucking terrifying. Then they get cool. Then they get boring. And there's not enough time on the part of the curve in your lifetime where it's cool

because it's always the same thing which is I have a weird fear of missing fireworks because it's the tradition and it's what we all do and I'm always excited and then ultimately disappointed by the finale the big finale, the big finish, because it's always like, more. Good. That's bullshit. I need in some way to know that my day at Disneyland or my Dodgers game is done.

Also, as a gay man and a fan of cannons, I want to hear the 1812 Overture on a regular basis. And firework shows are really one of your best sources for hearing the 1812 Overture, or Rhapsody in Blue.

Oh, I'm always sad when it's Rhapsody in Blue instead of the Overture. I want a real driving beat when I'm watching old-fashioned space explosions, you know? I do like when they're in shapes, and I still love the ones that explode, and they're like, we're gonna explode again. No one knows how it works.

No one's ever seen how it works. It just happens. Explodes, and it goes... That smell is so funny if you've never lived in a country where actual warfare happens. What was that, exactly? What was that, aw, you reminded us that war is a constant human condition.

These fucking people. There's also a tyranny of the firework. Like, are there not other exciting forms of explosions we could watch? You know, why is this the only kind of sky explosion around? It's always the same. It's always, you know, the kind of starburst pattern and then a few surprises, like a cowboy hat, you know? And it's like, where's the innovation, you know?

It's 2018. Agreed. There are Nazis on television. Trump is president. Try some new shit in the sky. If Elon Musk is selling flamethrowers now, maybe this is his next thing, right? Yeah.

Maybe he can take a break from pretending to invent the subway to invent a new kind of firework. This has gone on long enough. Let's spin it again. Okay. It has landed on Uncle Drew, which Adam suggested. And I don't even know what it is. Okay, great.

So this is a movie that comes out this weekend that stars a plethora of professional basketball players, including Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O'Neal and Reggie Miller. And I think Lisa Leslie's in there somewhere. But I think Nick Kroll makes an appearance, but the famous NBA star Nick Kroll. But this movie literally began as a Pepsi commercial. It was a Pepsi commercial that has now evolved into a feature film. So as someone who we all try to make movies, not we all, that was assumptive of me, but like, you know, we're trying to make movies and it's disappointing and it's frustrating

when a commercial, a cheesy, vapid, capitalistic, corporate television commercial can make such an easy and smooth transition to the Megaplex. That's really hurtful. And what's more hurtful is I am definitely going to see it at least two times. Why?

Because America is a corporate nightmare and there is no escaping it. We're all under its thumb. This is the Democratic Republic of Pepsi and we live here now. So anyway go check it out. Kyrie Irving. Oh and everyone wears old man makeup like those Eddie Murphy movies. It's just the worst possible thing imaginable. And obviously this is uncomfortable timing but the Geico caveman is here to do a dramatic reading. I mean, not all commercials to movies are bad. Ernest P. Worrell.

All the Ernest movies were local television commercials first, then transitioned to movies. I didn't know that. There's something. Once we said that corporations could have religions, it was only a matter of time before they had spec scripts. Exactly. Priyanka Chopra. Priyanka and Nick. What's going on there, Taz?

Okay. So y'all know Priyanka Chopra. She's a Bollywood star. Yeah. She was on Quantico. She sang with Timberland. You know, she does a lot of things. She is now dating Nick Jonas, allegedly.

And I think they were seen out in public wearing matching bands. So apparently they're getting married now. Or not. were seen out in public wearing matching bands so apparently they're getting married now um or not because the it was reported in indian media and the indian media kind of like the indian media goes gets really hyperbolic when it comes to their celebrities i don't know i think it's i think it's kind of a fake celebrity match-up and i'm just kind of like over this but then everyone really likes it because priyanka chipper is like 10 years older than Nick Jonas so everyone's like oh yeah that's awesome that she's older but you know I don't know I think she needs there's better options for her out there I'm not a big fan of Nick Jonas I think there's other people um I have been a fan of Priyanka Chopra

since the movie Dostana which was Bollywood I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry. It's so good. But I've been so worried that since the cancellation of Quantico, we will lose her, and we've been waiting for that person who can successfully transition from Bollywood to Hollywood and really make it stick. And if the two of them need to have a fake relationship, what could appeal more to gay men? Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra, the most beautiful woman in the world who always has something slightly wrong with her hair,

in a sham marriage, it's everything we're fascinated with. That's fair, that's fair. I'm checking with myself emotionally, and that was all true. I don't think she can do better than Nick Jonas. I don't think anyone can. Let's spin it again. Oh, it has landed on Rubio's Twitter. Let's leave it here.

I don't know if you guys have been seeing this, but Marco Rubio has decided to take to Twitter to become something like a cross between Howard Kurtz and Statler and Waldorf. He's basically like lamenting it every day and kind of being a pun and being like oh the media gives trump such a hard time that conservatives don't feel like they can criticize him or oh man whatever happened to the days where you couldn't see the word fuck in a newspaper or here's something from ecclesiastices I'm old-testing that. I don't know. And it's very annoying.

It's very annoying because Marco Rubio isn't a pundit. He's a United States senator. And he's on the sidelines critiquing why conservatives like Marco Rubio don't feel like they can tell the truth. And first of all, it's wrong. The reason that Republicans are not telling the truth about Donald Trump's flaws is not because they're afraid that the mainstream media won't give them a fair chance. They're not telling the truth because 30 years of cultural rot and propaganda inside the

Republican Party has made it impossible to tell their own side the truth. And the base is now more loyal to Donald Trump than it is to the dogmas of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio and all the rest. But as always, it seems like it's Marco Rubio trying to say, I'm just a guy like you who listens to Drake and tells it like it is.

And it's again because Marco Rubio has this conception of who Marco Rubio is, and he can never actually fucking do it. So he can't be honest about Donald Trump. He can't bring himself to show, tell us what he thinks, because he obviously still thinks Donald Trump is unfit. He obviously thinks Donald Trump is terrible. He obviously hates Donald Trump. But it's a lot easier to be honest about the New York Times when you're a Republican

in Florida than it is to be about Donald Trump. So he finds an easy villain where he can act like he's saying what he really thinks because it is what he really thinks about the mainstream media. It just pales in comparison to what he actually thinks about Donald Trump. It's very frustrating. And when he says that it's hard to tell the truth, of course it is. If it was easy for Republicans to tell the truth, they'd all be doing it. Marco Rubio is, I am almost positive,

very honest about what Donald Trump is like behind closed doors. I think Marco Rubio, with a mustache and a hat and a kind of an Echo Park outfit pretending to be someone else sitting on this stage could participate. You know, I think his views of Donald Trump align with our views of Donald Trump. I don't think they align on Justice Kennedy, but I think they align on Donald Trump.

But he can't bring himself to tell the truth. And it's fucking annoying. And people have, there have been some conservatives on Twitter and elsewhere that are like there's a certain kind of certain people that just they love going after Marco Rubio and they love going after Paul Ryan

why are they the targets and it's because it's for the same reason I'm critical of Marco Rubio for the same reason I'm specifically critical of people like Dina Powell because I know they know better I don't hold Steve King to any kind of a standard

he's someone we just have to defeat I don't know better. I don't hold Steve King to any kind of a standard. He's someone we just have to defeat. I don't expect better from Mitch McConnell. He is a giant political turtle, and he's going to crawl towards the power that he has been crawling towards his entire life. But I look at Marco Rubio, and I see the pain in his eyes, because I know that there's a person inside of Marco Rubio that is fucking screaming every single day, and he will not let that person out, because he's a person inside of Marco Rubio that is fucking screaming every single day.

And he will not let that person out because he's a coward. And Marco Rubio, free the little man inside of you that's screaming. Let him out. Chant let him out. Let him out, Marco Rubio. Let him out. Let him out. Let him out, Marco Rubio. Let him out. I criticize you because I know, I know that that man is in there. And he'll probably die in there.

I mean, the Bush administration was a beautiful time to be in empty suit, wasn't it? Like, you could just be like a dude and regular enough, and they would elect you to office and you would do just fine. Which is why I am very excited that this year we have people like Stacey Abrams and Paulette Jordan whose lives have been journeys and struggles and fights because when the shit goes down, you know that they actually are going to fight. I am more pissed at anyone.

I'm so pissed at Susan Collins right now, mostly just because she always talks about fucking Margaret Chase Smith. Because Margaret Chase Smith was the person who stared down McCarthy and said, you're ruining my fucking party, shut the fuck up. And if Susan Collins believes that she is a hard-talking mainer like Margaret Chase Smith, she needs to fucking talk to some people. I think that's a good place to leave it because you mentioned candidates like Stacey Abrams who are kind of putting up a fight

and saying what they believe, even in places where even a few months ago or years ago people would have said it wasn't possible. So let's end on a high note. I want to talk about Ocasio-Cortez because I do think it's a reason for hope. And I just was, you know, I feel there's a lot of people

learning things after the fact who didn't pay attention before it happened, and I was one of them. And I think I didn't follow the race because I didn't think it was important to me, not because I didn't care about the liberalism of the people we're putting up for election, but because we were focused on the Crooked Eight, and we were focused on the California races, and there was a chance that we were going to have Democrats in every district and in a district as blue as that one it's a foregone conclusion that

it will not be part of taking back the house it's just one of the seats we're going to have and I remember seeing that ad that she ran and it was fantastic and I thought that ad's fantastic and then I saw that she was challenging Joe Crowley and I thought to myself oh yes that boring guy from the leadership that I forget exists most of the time. And I didn't pay attention and I realized that that was wrong. And it was wrong because I am one of the people, and there's a lot of people like me, who has spent two years saying that we need Democrats to understand that the opposite of big isn't practical and the opposite of left isn't electable. that we need to redefine what it means for a candidate to be serious. That's something, and it's hard, and it means unlearning a lot of lessons

and it means disregarding a lot of conventional wisdom. And then here's this incredibly charismatic young woman putting that into practice. When she was asked about being a socialist, she said, there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018. And I found that to be so moving. And it's right. And it was an answer to a question about being a democratic socialist. And I'm not a socialist.

I'm a liberal. But what she campaigned on is basically what I hope liberals will campaign on. Medicare for all, a guaranteed job for all, good education for all from universal pre-K to universal debt-free college. And to me, the fact that that has become something that people who are aligning with democratic socialists think liberalism doesn't represent is not the fault of people who don't identify as liberals. is not the fault of people who don't identify as liberals. It is the fault of liberals for allowing simple, elegant, big ideas to be seen as outside of the possible for what it means to be a liberal.

I think that's wrong. Big, simple, good ideas that you can say in three fucking words that says America is for all of us. And that, to me, is what she was saying. And the fact that that excited people, and that there's enthusiastic and passionate young people who don't trust liberalism, that is not on them. That is on Democrats. So I I have always rejected the people that said, oh, Bernie Sanders, he's not even a Democrat. I won't take seriously conservatives who had no problem with borrowing trillions to pay for tax cuts for corporations or to pay for wars.

But then you say that that Medicare for all is impractical. There was a story today about a woman whose leg got ripped up when she was boarding a train at the DC Metro. And the first thing that she was worried about was that if they called an ambulance, she would owe $3,000. Everything but Medicare for all is impractical. And so what made me excited is that you can see a path for what it means to be a liberal, and that it's a liberalism that is big enough and tough enough and scrappy enough and willing to fight against the forces that have taken power away from people in this country that is a banner for everyone on our side to fight under. That people from the center of the party all the way to people that identify

as a democratic socialist can look at what liberalism means and say, I understand that. I'm with that. That's my fight too. And that's not just about appealing to the left of the party. That's about building a coalition

to actually take the country back. So for all the infighting, for all the different takes on what her election means, that to me is what I took away from it, that there is a story we can tell that can unite this party and that can bring both the disenfranchised, the left, and the working people who don't think Democrats are for them, that there is an answer, that there is a vision that we can all get behind, and I hope we do. And that in a very difficult week I thought was a really exciting and hopeful sign.

And with that I want to thank this incredible panel. I want to thank Taz Ahmed, Adam Lustig, and Guy Branum. You can buy Guy's book, preorder it now, My Life as a Goddess. You should get this fucking book. Thank you all for coming out. life as a goddess, you should get this fucking book. Thank you all for coming out. Thank you.